Loss of Innocence
soppingwetpanties
Another story featuring our favorite hard luck detective, Max Pemberton.
Thank you to migbird for your thoughtful comments and encouragement.
Thank you for your votes and comments on "Betrayal." Please vote... comment... on this one. It's catnip for me.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, merchandise, companies, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. All characters in sexual situations are 18 years or older.
Prologue
I'm Maxine "Max" Pemberton. I was a member of the Cincinnati police force for thirty-five years. I'm retired now, and running a café that was owned by my good friend, Nicky, who passed away almost ten years ago and left it to me. When I joined the force, I was a brash, impressionable young woman with a chip on my shoulder and a serious drinking problem.
I was married to a man I met in college, but the hard living and the long hours took its toll, and after seven years of ups and downs we called it quits. It wasn't Jim's fault. It wasn't mine. He knew I was going to be a cop. His dad was one. He knew what he was signing up for. What we didn't figure was that I was attracted to women and not to men. I didn't know it for sure during our marriage, but I knew it for sure the first time I went to bed with a woman. My sex life with Jim was practically non-existent at the end, and the intimacy I achieved with my first female lover told me my time with Jim was over.
Back when I started, the force was only about ten percent women, and few at the upper echelons. I had to be scrappy to make it in a testosterone fueled work environment. And make it I did, but not without my share of dizzying highs and rock bottom lows.
I found love (and lost it as well) with a battered wife [Cold Steel], tried my luck again with a police Lieutenant [Hot Steel], crushed a drug ring [Pink Ice], and uncovered corruption in our department [Betrayal]. A former lover and colleague from the Columbus police force, Leka Singh, worked with me on an abduction case. This is our story.
Chapter One
Getting Back on my Feet... Again
There are only so many times that you can get crushed and pull yourself back up again. I felt like a cat that's used up eight of her nine lives. My life was an elevator ride from the penthouse to the basement, and back up and down again so many times I'd lost count.
The latest broadsides were the death of my former partner and lover, Rachel, followed by Brianna's death, so young and vulnerable [ed. note -- see
Betrayal
]. There was little I could have done to prevent either tragedy, but I felt responsible nevertheless.
My partner Lanny took me back to the Royal Palms Motel, a fleabag on the wrong side of the tracks in Cincinnati. I'd taken up permanent residence there for the past several months. My usual reaction to a tragedy of this magnitude was to get and stay blind drunk for as long as possible. Lanny convinced me that drunkenness wasn't a viable long-term coping mechanism. I reluctantly agreed.
During my last case I had reason to reconnect with Lehka Singh, a Detective First Grade in the Columbus Division of Police. Lehka was of Indian descent, a first generation American. Her father Preshant came over in the 60's from Hyderabad to join a national automotive parts manufacturer located near Columbus, and shortly after brought over his wife Maira to start a family. Lehka was their first born daughter, followed by her sister Eshana three years later.
Lehka had the usual assimilation issues one would expect of a non-white person in Middle America. Those problems were compounded by the fact that in her late teens she suspected she was gay. Of course her parents put an inordinate amount of pressure on her from the time she was a little girl to marry a good Indian boy (translated -- a doctor), pressure that she found to be both offensive and antithetical to her biological desires.
As one could have expected, she rebelled from the customs of the old country. Even if she was heterosexual, it was unlikely she would have followed her parent's wishes. But being gay, there was zero chance of that happening.
The second point of friction was her career choice (translated -- she should have been a doctor). Her expressed interest in enrolling in the police academy, combined with her rejection of every male suitor her parents put in front of her, led to a virtual estrangement for many years. Lehka never came out to her parents, though everyone in her workplace knew she was gay (her sister also knew, but was sworn to secrecy). Of course, after the public accolades Lehka received in solving a double homicide case with me (including the highest level of commendation from the Columbus police force), she became the pride of the family. Better late than never.
My relationship with my parents wasn't that much better than hers. My father was a sales representative for a pharmaceutical company (which I consider to be ironic, given the number of drug dealers peddling Oxy that I've busted) and was always on the road. My mother was a raging alcoholic, and as far as I can tell it's the only attribute I inherited from her. I consider my nomadic living habits (the last five months in a shitty motel room) to be from my father.
Lehka was a Detective Third Grade when I met her. She was working a murder case in Columbus involving a teenage girl, maybe nineteen, who was sexually assaulted and strangled with a blue nylon rope which left fibers embedded in the skin of the victim's neck. The ligature marks from the nylon rope could only have been made by a person of unusual strength. Lehka noticed that there was bruising on the neck from the perpetrator's hands, and that the more extensive bruising on the left side indicated the killer was left handed.
Lehka detected a similar
modus operendi
in a case I was handling, a young prostitute who was strangled and left by the river. I noted in the case file that there were blue nylons fibers on the victim and deep bruises caused by the killer's hands. Lehka called me, and we compared notes, and there was enough similarities to warrant a joint investigation. Our respective managements agreed, and we ended up working together for three months, culminating in the arrest and conviction of the perpetrator.
Even though it was common knowledge that I was a lesbian, the fact that Lehka hadn't come out (and was terrified if her parents found out) limited her sexual experience to a few casual out of town encounters that involved groping but no hard core sex. As far as I knew, I was her first.
Lehka was tall, probably 5'10", with long black wavy hair. It had a beautiful sheen to it. She had dark skin, about the color of burnt butter, and a thin face with a narrow nose. She had a beautiful smile that went nicely with her shiny dark eyes. I was attracted to her instantly.
When we talked relationships, she would either avoid the subject or tell me she hadn't been in one. Of course I never believed her. Someone as attractive as her would have undoubtedly led to at least one long-term relationship. That's when I suspected she was hiding something.
Nothing happened between us during the investigation. Nothing. Lehka never let on that she was interested in me, even though I detected a strong sexual tension. She was good at being closeted at that time.
It was our celebratory party that lit the fuse.
It was the middle of the summer. We had just found and arrested the killer. He was in Cincinnati, in the West End, planning his next kill. We captured him in no small part to Lehka's tireless work on the case. We ended up at the Landing Point on the night of his arrest, the watering hole of choice for our station.
As usual, Kris, a woman who was a fixture at the Point, was serving our table. It was Lehka, me, and the rest of the investigative team -- a half dozen guys from both Columbus and Cincinnati, drinking Jameson's and trading barbs about which office did the heavy lifting. I already had a reputation as a heavy drinker, and I found that Lehka could hold her liquor as well. We'd already been drinking for several hours when the guys started making rude remarks. You have to remember it was ten years ago, when HR departments weren't breathing fire up your ass all the time. Lehka and I both had nice breasts, though mine were bigger (to be fair, I was carrying about twenty more pounds than her, and at that time I was a "G" cup), so you can imagine the focus of the drunken men's attention.
Stony, one of the lead detectives from our office (he's now retired), tugged on my blouse. A button popped open, revealing some of my considerable cleavage. Stony was a good guy, but not a good drinker. He was already hammered.
"Jeez Max, you never go out with me even though I ask nice." He slurred his words and spit ran off his chin. Stony's wife kicked him out of the house a few years back, and in his inebriated state he was literally willing to fuck anything with a hole in it.
I was going to give him a pass. We won. We were happy. We were drunk.
"I don't think it was you asking, I think it was your puny dick," I fired back.
The guys started laughed at Stony, who proceeded to down another shot and slam the glass on the table in triumph.
"Heyyy. Fuck you guys." He pointed to his mates, wobbled like a drunken sailor, and then hit his chin on the table as he lurched forward.
Two of his mates put their shoulders under his arms and helped him out, the toes of his shoes dragging on the floor.
The others filtered out with them, leaving Lehka and me on our own.
Kris returned to find just the two of us. "Outlasted the boys, eh?" She was a barrel chested woman with a heart of gold. She'd been working there for twenty years, and knew what was going on at our station better than anyone there. She loaded the empty glasses on a tray and started wiping down the table.
"Those guys can't drink shit," I declared. I was feeling no pain. Lehka was looking at me differently.
Kris laughed. "You are two tough broads. You drank Stoney under the table... or maybe on top of the table." She chuckled as she said it.
"We are tough, aren't we Lehka?" We gave each other a high five.
"Fuckin' A right," Lehka chimed in. She was feeling no pain as well.
"Someday we'll have those motherfucker's jobs," I boasted.
"You got that right, fucking perverts," she answered. As it turns out she was right. She ultimately became a supervisor in her department and made First Grade. I, on the other hand, found Maker's Mark, and became a drunk... First Grade.
"Two more shots Kris," Lehka barked out, in no mood to quit partying. She had never let her hair down in front of me before. It was clear she was gathering up the courage to do something. Another button had opened up on her blouse, but she either didn't notice or didn't care. I noticed.
"Don't you girls have to work tomorrow?" Kris asked.
"Nope," said Lehka. "We get tomorrow off. My first day off in two months. That's why I'm going to parteeee." She had to put her hand on the table to keep from falling forward like Stoney.
"All right, but let's at least make sure neither of you drive. I'm going to call you a cab." Kris loved us like a mother, and acted like one too.
"OK," Lehka said, "But bring us our drinks."
"OK," said Kris. "But's it's last call."
"She's a buzz killer," Lehka muttered out of Kris's earshot.
"She's all right," I answered. "She just worries about us."
Kris came back with the shots.
